Hamilton’s Le Tambour partners with hot Niagara restaurant on sold-out meal

Fat Rabbit, which earned lots of accolades in 2024 and is expanding its location in St. Catharines, was immediately on board with a collaboration with James Street North’s French bistro.

The restaurant scene in Niagara is booming, and the reverberations are being felt here in Hamilton. 

This month, Zach Smith, head chef and co-owner of Fat Rabbit in St. Catharines, partnered with chef Fady Dawood of Hamilton’s Le Tambour on a five-course pre-fixe menu featuring dishes from each chef. 

The event, which offered two seating options, sold out in less than 24 hours. 

And it’s no surprise. While Le Tambour, which opened in Hamilton in the summer of 2023, has quickly become a fan favourite in Hamilton, Fat Rabbit has been showered with accolades over the past year, taking the No. 8 spot on Air Canada’s Best New Restaurants of 2024 list and nabbing a coveted recommendation in the 2024 Michelin Guide. 

The menu for the evening featured a curated selection of bistro-style dishes with a focus on bold, rustic flavours and local, seasonal ingredients. 

The chefs split the menu, with Dawood offering a heavenly amuse-bouche featuring Le Tambour owner Teo Paul’s cottage-cured and smoked salmon served atop a crispy crostini, followed by grilled squid with black peanuts and a fiery Mexican salsa macha. For his main dish, he served the softest, melt-in-your-mouth, slow-roasted pork with pickled jalapenos and finished it off with a seriously more-ish sweet potato pie and spiced cream. 

For Smith’s dishes, he served grilled quail and squash tempura with a tangy, umami anchovy vinaigrette.

But his favourite dish of the evening was crispy beef sweetbreads served with beautifully soft braised cabbage and salty double-smoked bacon. The use of the tender and rich organ meat was a nod to his love of nose-to-tail eating.  

 “If we’re going to eat and cook meat, that's a decision that can't be taken lightly,” says Smith. “So at Fat Rabbit, we want to make sure that we're using the whole animal.”

The collaboration was initiated by Dawood, who reached out to Smith to pitch the idea. 

For Smith, the partnership was a “no-brainer.” 

“As soon as he asked, I said, ‘Absolutely.’ It made sense for us. I've always been a huge fan of all of Teo Paul’s other restaurants: Union, Côte de Boeuf, and Hearts,” says Smith. “When I was conceptualizing Fat Rabbit, Côte de Boeuf was a really big inspiration for us. So I was honoured that a restaurant in that group wanted to collaborate with us.” 

The restaurants share a similar culinary ethos, focusing on high-quality, sustainable and locally-sourced fare in a relaxed and welcoming space. 

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“I really love the laid-back feel,” Smith says of James Street North’s Le Tambour. 

“The thought process that goes into (Paul’s) restaurants is about more than just the food. It's the energy: everything feels a little bit interactive, from the seating to the service stations to the open kitchen, like having their dry curing fridge right in the middle of the dining room.” 

The event was an opportunity for both restaurants to collaborate on a new, unique menu while expanding their audience and building their respective brands. 

“(The event) was a great opportunity to learn techniques, be a part of the community, and broaden our reach while giving people an opportunity to try food that maybe they haven't had before,” Smith says. “It's always nice to bring a little bit of our experience to Hamilton. I just hope that (diners) liked it enough that they'll want to make the trip to (St. Catharines) and give the whole experience a try.”

Hamilton’s thriving food scene has been a boon for Smith, who sees it rivalling Toronto’s. 

“Anything that you would want to get in Toronto, you can get (in Hamilton), which is great, especially for people on this side of the lake. Over the last 10 to 15 years, (Hamilton’s food scene) has been exploding. So it seems like there's going to be more and more cool restaurants popping up as Toronto becomes more unaffordable.”  

Smith knows the Toronto food scene well. Before Fat Rabbit, he worked at Toronto’s legendary Bar Raval before moving to Meat + Three, a Matty Matheson-owned restaurant in Fort Erie that has since closed. 

His food service background put him in good stead to open his own restaurant. And St. Catharines seemed like the obvious choice. Centrally located in the heart of Niagara, it's the region's largest city with key transport links to Toronto, Niagara Falls, and the U.S. border. The burgeoning arts and food scene, not to mention the high volume of wine tourism, made the location a real draw for Smith. He estimates that nearly 90 per cent of Fat Rabbit’s business comes from tourism. 

Fat Rabbit is located in an unassuming lot at a busy intersection in the city’s downtown core and is often filled with an eclectic mix of diners, from young families to couples and tourists to regular locals. Besides being an award-winning eatery, the space also serves as a bottle shop, chop house, zero-waste butchery and market.

“At the restaurant, all the meat is locally sourced from Ontario. We work with small farms that really believe in the philosophy of regenerative farming: they're taking from the earth, but they’re also giving it back to it, (as opposed) to industrial farming, where they're just stripping nutrients from the soil and harming the environment.” 

The bounty of Niagara and the surrounding region was also a big selling point for Smith. With a menu that focuses on local, sustainably-sourced meat and produce, the region promised a rich offering of both. 

“It's very important to us to source things locally. During the peak farming season, over 90 per cent of our produce comes from Niagara,” says Smith. “One of the farmers is actually in St. Catharines and has an urban farm in his backyard. We buy from a couple of other farms in the area too, as well as all the beautiful fruit orchards nearby.”

He recommends first timers try the beef tartare tonnato, a new take on a classic Italian antipasto dish called vitello tonnato. 

Fat Rabbit will be expanding the restaurant, nearly doubling its capacity from 32 to 60 seats, a testament to its growing popularity. Smith will also be opening another restaurant in St. Catharines, a “loosely French-ish” eatery and bar called Les Incompetents, named in honour of the French dig directed at Kevin in the original Home Alone movie. Expect French spirits and a French-inspired menu. 

“None of us are French. None of us speak French, and I’ve never cooked French food,” says Smith. “It’s going to be fun.“

Fat Rabbit is located at 34 Geneva St., St. Catharines.